The politics of disgust animated for the age of Trump

How does disgust influence modern political behavior? I’ve been studying disgust as a moral emotion since I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, working with Paul Rozin. It’s a fascinating emotion, lurking behind most of the divisive social issues in the American culture war, from abortion through flag burning, gay marriage, and now trans-gender bathroom access. My colleagues and I have found that social conservatives are higher on “disgust sensitivity” than are progressives and libertarians, and we’ve found that people’s scores on the “sanctity” foundation of the Moral Foundations Scale is a powerful predictor of their attitudes on many political issues, even after you partial out their self-placement on the left-right dimension.

The role of disgust in politics is especially important in 2016 as Donald Trump talks more about disgust than any major political figure since, well, some 20th century figures that were concerned about guarding the purity of their nation and ethnic stock. Studying disgust can help you understand Donald Trump and some portion of his political appeal. I haven’t studied European right-wing movements, but I’ve seen hints that disgust plays a role in many of them as well. Anyone interested in the psychology of authoritarianism should learn a bit about disgust.

In 2013 I gave a talk on the psychology of disgust and politics at the Museum of Sex, in New York City, hosted by Reason, so the audience was mostly composed of libertarians. An artist, Matthew Drake, has just taken a portion of that talk – on the evolution of disgust and its links to politics – and animated it using the RSA whiteboard technique. I think he did a great job; see for yourself below.

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This is only tangentially related, but I wanted to share with you a story related to The Righteous Mind, which I’m nearly finished reading. I recently attended Citizen Climate Lobby’s annual conference in D.C., which aims to help participants of all political affiliations find common ground on climate change policy, as well as train citizens to engage with their legislators around climate change policy.

During one of the panels, I was pleasantly surprised to hear the Moral Foundations Theory discussed in order to better understand how to communicate with conservatives to pass policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One of the panelists was explaining (without doing justice) your finding that Liberals score higher on Harm and Fairness, while Conservatives score higher on Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. No sooner than did the speaker finish discussing that, than did a woman interrupt him, saying “I strongly disagree with these contentions. I don’t think this is fair to say about liberals.” She then went on to reject that conservatives value loyalty more than liberals, mostly on the grounds that she herself values loyalty highly, and that she knows many people who value loyalty highly.

First of all, in case you’re not already aware, a major non-partisan climate change advocacy group is using your work to help build consensus on the need to act on climate. That is something you should be incredibly proud of! In fact, Citizens Climate Lobby has formed a (small) 6-person Climate Solutions Caucus, with 2 Republicans on it. It is the first bipartisan Caucus of its kind.

Secondly, this woman responded as if she were your textbook human. Her inner lawyer and gut reaction hated being called “disloyal” (even though that’s not what your study said–it was how she interpreted what the speaker was saying), and found any excuse to deny it. Another liberal in the audience chimed in with her under the same grounds. The conversation actually ended once another person said (about The Righteous Mind) “Just read the damn book!” It was all very fitting.

I’m sharing this with you in the hopes that you’ll get a chuckle out of all of this, and that you’ll be gratified to know that your work is having real-world impact.

It reminds me of how you have said that Hillary is the candidate who will unite America, or who is trying to unite America. It seems to me that she is not uniting all of America, but instead uniting minorities against the historical majority of America.

Lastly, if it is true that Sarah Silverman and Hillary Clinton feel disgust towards conservatives and Christians, perhaps the whole idea that feeling disgust causes conservatism is not really true? Perhaps people have an ideology that informs them what to feel disgust about, and liberals, informed by their ideology, specifically make efforts to “chill out” over anything and everything except for “fucking white males”—

As you have recently seen, Hillary has called half of Trump’s supporters “deplorables” and “irredeemable.” This seems to me like disgust. Then again, perhaps you can split hairs over exactly what disgust is.

You have said that Hillary is the candidate who is trying to unite America. It seems to me that she is not trying to unite America, but is trying to unite the historical minorities of America against the historical majority.

Also, regarding the idea that conservatives uniquely feel disgust, I wonder about that. Isn’t disgust something that must be directed at something else? And doesn’t your ideology inform this? Liberals not only feel less disgust towards homosexuality, but their ideology- which is argued for persuasively to them at young ages under a certain set of commonly held ideals regarding morality and rationality- teaches that one MUST be tolerant of basically anything that is not obviously directly harming you, besides maybe white males, who must be undermined for historical reasons:

So a liberal might stifle or lie about any disgust they might feel towards things like homosexuality in order to keep their morality. It seems to me that it is not at all uncommon for adults to stifle emotion. For example, I have heard many liberal guys throw around the word “gay” in a derogatory manner, despite their firmly held convictions that such things are wrong. In this case, they might secretly feel disgust, but have developed a habit of stifling it almost constantly.

I am a psychology student and i was told to write my classy essay about emotions. I was searching for something interesting to write about when I found your article. And it’s wonderful! You did the great job finding all those evidences and putting them together. Now I’m considering finding more information about disgust and make it the main theme of my essay